Stout women remove skin from your ankles with their chariots. Old men stop-and-start foot traffic abruptly as they shake hands and kiss their acquaintances. It exasperates some of the younger locals and beguiles some of the visitors, but these are prices of participation in French local markets.

Local markets have always been important in Europe and set to become even more so. And while markets have been at the heart and soul of a town, they may become its lifeblood too.

I want to enter the world of narrative research obliquely.
In this short note we avoid the theory and go straight to practice. We apply the tools for interpreting narrative research immediately on an important topic—your health.
We'll get to strategy and leadership in due course. But first, let's concentrate on getting you stronger, faster and leaner.

Every business has a story to tell. How your business tells its story will have a critical impact on the success of your company. But what is even more important is discovering what that story will be. This can seem very obvious but I am astounded by the number of companies who did not know what their company’s story is. They tell us in our meetings that they know what their story is and they just want to get on with telling it but usually they completely miss the essence of the story and thus miss an important opportunity to connect deeply with their customers.

You have joint pain or a headache. You have a list of things to do but the discomfort is distracting. You ingest the recommended levels (or slightly above) of tylenol/paracetamol or aspirin, and as the fog lifts you move down your check list of activities.
But do you rush to discover what other fine products and services are offered by the company that has relieved you of this burden? Probably not. If you do reflect on your pain relief, you’re probably grateful of its discovery, but thankful too that this malady doesn’t strike too often, as the toxic pressure on your liver is considerable.

People are always knowledgeable and passionate about their craft and about the tools they use. Many are flattered that we seek their opinions and thus willingly give their time. Over 90% of respondents participate in conversation, and more than 70% run over the allotted interview time—at their request.

An alternative title for this piece could have been “Narrative research—a practical introduction.”
As stated previously, most of my clients are hard-nosed and commercially-orientated, and typically prefer to see a cause-and-effect relationship between spending and a return. They often have a science or engineering background, and have a predilection for anything that can be measured and spreadsheeted—preferably with error bars. They have huge intellectual horsepower and readily assimilate the concepts around complex adaptive systems, but less readily want to deal with the attending implications of managing ambiguity.